Cloud · head to head · checked 8 August 2026

Alibaba Cloud vs AWS

6 cloud instances from the two, side by side: what each plan includes, what it costs (on-demand hourly rate × 730 hours, no commitment discount), and where the price comes from.

Alibaba Cloud

from $16.79/mo

ecs.n4.small · 3 plans listed

Best price per vCPU: $16.79/vCPU (ecs.n4.small)

AWS

from $30.37/mo

t3.medium · 3 plans listed

Best price per vCPU: $15.19/vCPU (t3.medium)

Which is cheaper, Alibaba Cloud or AWS?

Alibaba Cloud's cheapest listed plan is ecs.n4.small at $16.79/mo; AWS's is t3.medium at $30.37/mo. The price shown is on-demand hourly rate × 730 hours, no commitment discount.

Which gives more for the money, Alibaba Cloud or AWS?

On price per vCPU, AWS does best with t3.medium at $15.19/vCPU; Alibaba Cloud's best is ecs.n4.small at $16.79/vCPU.

How many cloud instances does each offer here?

We list 3 for Alibaba Cloud and 3 for AWS, each checked against the provider's own pricing page.

Alibaba Cloud

Everything from Alibaba Cloud

ecs.n4.smallapprox
vCPU
1
RAM
2 GB
Hourly
$0.023
Note
Pay-as-you-go — system disk and public bandwidth billed separately
Region
Singapore
$16.79/moVisit price source · checked 2026-08-08
ecs.n4.largeapprox
vCPU
2
RAM
4 GB
Hourly
$0.047
Note
Pay-as-you-go — system disk and public bandwidth billed separately
Region
Singapore
$34.31/moVisit price source · checked 2026-08-08
ecs.n4.xlargeapprox
vCPU
4
RAM
8 GB
Hourly
$0.154
Note
Pay-as-you-go — system disk and public bandwidth billed separately
Region
Singapore
$112.42/moVisit price source · checked 2026-08-08

AWS

Everything from AWS

t3.mediumapprox
vCPU
2
RAM
4 GB
Hourly
$0.0416
Note
Burstable — sustained full-vCPU load consumes CPU credits. Since Feb 2024, AWS charges ~$0.005/hr (~$3.65/mo) per public IPv4 address, in-use or not — not included in the price shown, unlike Oracle/Alibaba/Tencent which bundle a public IP free
Region
us-east-1
$30.37/moVisit price source · checked 2026-08-05
t3.largeapprox
vCPU
2
RAM
8 GB
Hourly
$0.0832
Note
Burstable — sustained full-vCPU load consumes CPU credits. Since Feb 2024, AWS charges ~$0.005/hr (~$3.65/mo) per public IPv4 address, in-use or not — not included in the price shown, unlike Oracle/Alibaba/Tencent which bundle a public IP free
Region
us-east-1
$60.74/moVisit price source · checked 2026-08-05
t3.xlargeapprox
vCPU
4
RAM
16 GB
Hourly
$0.1664
Note
Burstable — sustained full-vCPU load consumes CPU credits. Since Feb 2024, AWS charges ~$0.005/hr (~$3.65/mo) per public IPv4 address, in-use or not — not included in the price shown, unlike Oracle/Alibaba/Tencent which bundle a public IP free
Region
us-east-1
$121.47/moVisit price source · checked 2026-08-05

Alibaba Cloud against the rest

AWS against the rest

How this page is made: every figure above is computed from the plans listed, which were checked against each provider's own pricing page (linked per plan, with the date). Nothing here is ranked by who pays us. The highlighted plan is each provider's best on price per vCPU. Non-USD prices are converted at an approximate fixed rate for comparison only. See our methodology and how we make money.